Philoponus: On Aristotle on the Soul 1.1-2

232 Pages·2005·1.8 MB·English

by  Eijk

PHILOPONUS
On Aristotle
On the Soul 1.1-2
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PHILOPONUS
On Aristotle
On the Soul 1.1-2
Translated by
Philip J. van der Eijk
Bristol Classical Press
Ancient Commentators on Aristotle
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Contents
Preface vii
Acknowledgements x
Introduction 1
Deviations from the Text of M. Hayduck 11
Translation 13
Prooemium 15
Chapter 1 36
Chapter 2 82
Notes 115
Bibliography 145
English-Greek Glossary 163
Greek-English Index 177
Index of Names 207
Subject Index 209
Index of Passages 215
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Preface
Richard Sorabji
The commentary by Philoponus on Aristotle On the Soul is taken from
the seminars of his teacher, Ammonius, with additions of his own. This
opening volume contains an important overview in the Prooemium,
which first distinguishes the different faculties of the soul and then
argues for the soul’s incorporeality, but also analyses its relation to
fleshly and non-fleshly bodies. I shall concentrate on the Prooemium,
because it makes a number of striking points.
At 4,22, Philoponus explains Aristotle’s idea at An. Post. 1.31, 88a12-
17; 2.2, 90a26, that one might be able to recognise from a single observation
that all lunar eclipse is due to the earth’s shadow, or that all glass is
transparent because it contains pores. Philoponus takes the example of
inferring from the sphericity of the moon that all heavenly bodies are
spherical. But what he adds is that it requires knowing that they all have
the same essence and then using discursive reason (dianoia).
At 5,16, it is no accident that Philoponus talks in a commentary on
Aristotle of opinion being reminded (anamnêsthênai) by seeing a single
instance that all members of a given species have two feet. For he
ascribes to Aristotle Plato’s theory that we are reminded, or recollect,
what we knew before birth, when he says in De Intellectu p. 40,36
Verbeke, that the child’s potential intellect has innate knowledge sup-
pressed by the process of birth.
At 5,3, Philoponus makes opinion (doxa) project concepts (proballein
logous) that it retains within of perceptible objects. This was already
postulated by Proclus as the method by which opinion recognises the
essences of sensible things, in Tim. 1, 251,4-9, a reference I owe to Matthias
Perkams. Elsewhere Proclus describes the projection of concepts onto the
screen of imagination as like projection of images onto a mirror, rather in
the manner of the modern cinema, in Eucl. 1, 121,1-7; 141,2-19.
In Philoponus, we find the Platonist tendency to blur Aristotle’s
sharp distinction between intellectual and perceptual functions. At
5,34-6,10, he equates imagination, which receives impressions (tupoi)
from the senses, and which Aristotle treats as a perceptual faculty, with
passive intellect. This blurring of the perceptual and intellectual was
already present in an earlier commentator Themistius, who at in DA
viii Preface
98,35-99,10, made potential intellect into a storehouse of impressions
from perception. And Proclus already reports that passive intellect and
imagination had been equated, in Eucl. 1, 51,10-52,20.
Turning to the practical faculties, at 5,24-33, Philoponus evinces an
attitude to deliberate choice (proairesis) closer to that of the Neoplaton-
ist Iamblichus than to Aristotle’s. For Aristotle, deliberate choice had
been the centrepiece of his ethics. The human being had been equated
with this faculty, EN, 6.2, 1139b5. By Iamblichus, by contrast, deliber-
ate choice is criticised precisely because it can turn either way (rhepein
pros amphotera is like Philoponus’ epamphoterizein), and so side
against reason. It is useful only in the world of becoming, and, unlike
the wish for the good (boulêsis), of which Philoponus also speaks, it
would be shed by the purified soul, Iamblichus On the Mysteries of the
Egyptians, 1.10, 36,1-5; 1.12, 41,3-4.
The incorporeality of soul is argued partly on the basis that sight has
to receive opposite qualities, both black and white, and no physical
object can at the same time receive opposites in the same place, 12,34-
13,20. The gradual dematerialisation of the senses by Aristotle’s
commentators, because of the need to avoid collision of opposites like
black and white, started with an earlier commentator, Alexander, and
has been traced in my ‘From Aristotle to Brentano: The Development of
the Concept of Intentionality’.1
Self-awareness also depends on the incorporeality of some faculties.
At 14,31-2, Philoponus uses a term for self-awareness that is already
found in the Stoic Epictetus, epistrephesthai, to turn in on oneself, and
he refers to the point made by the Neoplatonist Porphyry, Sentences 41,
52,7-53,5, that a body cannot engage in this self-penetration. The only
faculties which can do so are rational faculties, because they can operate
independently of body. At 14,36ff., Philoponus gives as a reason for
believing that rational faculties are self-aware the same reason as was
given by Aristotle DA 3.4, 430a2-4; Metaph. 12.7, 1072b19-21, and
repeated by Alexander DA 86,14-23 and Plotinus 5.3 [49] 5 (42-8).
According to Aristotle, the thinking intellect is identical with the objects
of its thought as they act upon it. So the objects which it thinks are, in
a way, itself. Hence it is self-thinking.
Philoponus says in 14,33-5 that it is the rational soul that is aware of
our perception, whereas Aristotle had said it was the central perceptual
faculty,On Sleep 2, 455a15-22, called by the commentators the common
sense. The preference for reason had started among Platonists before
Philoponus. It is found in Plutarch of Athens ap. ‘Philoponus’ in DA 3,
464,24-465,31 (I have sought to explain divergent reports in The Phi-
losophy of the Commentators, 200-600 AD, vol. 1, Psychology, 4(c)
[London & Ithaca, NY 2004]); Proclus in Tim. 1, 254,31-255,20. In a final
twist, Philoponus’ contemporaries in Athens combine the idea that the
common sense is responsible with the idea that a rational faculty is
responsible for self-awareness, by blurring Aristotle’s distinction of the
Preface ix
perceptual and the intellectual further, and making Aristotle’s common
sense into a rational faculty; Priscian, On Theophrastus 21,32-22,23;
‘Simplicius’ (who I now incline to think was Priscian) in DA 187,27-
188,35; 173,3-7.
Philoponus tells us in 17,19ff. about the Platonist theory that the soul
is housed not only in our fleshly body, but also in two finer bodies, called
vehicles, which interpenetrate the fleshly body and outlast it. The idea
of a vehicle for the soul comes from Plato, Phaedrus 247B, Phaedo 113D,
and Timaeus 41D-E. A vehicle for the soul is needed, according to
Philoponus, to permit punishment after death (a problem for Christian
accounts of Purgatory), and to permit the materialisation of ghosts and
demons. The coarser pneumatic vehicle could be shed by a purified soul,
but not the luminous vehicle, as Proclus had already said, in Tim. 3,
236,31ff.; 298,12ff.; ET 196; 207-9; PT 3.5. Proclus reports, however,
that there had been other views on the impermanence of the pneumatic
vehicle, in Tim. 3, 234,8-235,9. Our need to keep our soul vehicles
healthy is said by Philoponus at 19,27 to have implications for diet.
Philoponus shows himself aware of medical developments since Aris-
totle. In 19,19ff., unlike Aristotle, he is aware that the brain, not the
heart, is the seat of consciousness, and he knows about its membranes
and about the suppression of consciousness by pressure on the mem-
branes, and about the optic nerve. He may have known about this
through the works of the great doctor, Galen, but later in the commen-
tary he opposes some of Galen’s physicalistic conclusions. Galen has a
treatise called That mental states follow the states of the body. Philo-
ponus, like Alexander before him, objects to the talk of following
(hepesthai) and of being a result (apotelesma). Borrowing a word used
by Alexander he says that mental states merely supervene (epigines-
thai) on bodily states, 51,13-52,1.
Philoponus finishes the Prooemium by saying that Aristotle in On the
Soul, just as in the Physics and Metaphysics, concludes his treatise by
moving to the highest principles, in this case to the immortal rational
soul, 20,31ff.
Philoponus was a Platonist, but also a Christian and an expounder of
Aristotle. What strikes me about this Prooemium is how much it is the
Platonism that comes to the fore, including the repeated Platonist
reinterpretation of Aristotle. One would not predict from reading this
Prooemium on its own that Philoponus would later launch a whole book
attacking the pagan Platonist, Proclus, on behalf of Christianity. This
may reflect the extent to which the Prooemium represents the views of
Philoponus’ teacher Ammonius.
Note
1.Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, supp. vol. 1991, 227-59.